


9 Lives

by magrittesque



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Historical, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Reincarnation, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Temporary Character Death, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:26:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2628311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magrittesque/pseuds/magrittesque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You meet across different centuries, different lifetimes. He doesn't recall a thing, but each and every memory is etched into your mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	9 Lives

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [25 Lives](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/13960) by tongari. 



> This is something I first wrote in a different language, with the English translation being a slightly altered version. Yay for first work on AO3!
> 
> Oh and, please check out the comic by tongari, because it is lovely and heart-wrenching and just the greatest thing ever.

Mats' first encounter with Benni was in a Roman amphitheatre filled with roaring crowds hungry for blood. As two Germanic prisoners of war, they had no choice but to pick up swords and shields and defend themselves against ferocious exotic beasts and trained warriors. Until they were the only two remaining.

The frail-looking blond boy facing him bellowed like a wounded beast, charging at Mats with his bloodstained weapon raised. The world they inhabited was a never-ending battle for survival.

As the tip of his sword pierced the blond boy's throat, a single tear slipped into the dust.

Their fates crossed once again on the medieval battlefields of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the handsome armour-clad crusader did not seem to remember Mats.

On frigid nights, they huddled against each other for warmth in the barracks. Gradually, Mats allowed his hands and lips to wander, slipping like scalding liquid over the knight's pale skin. He loved the sensation of Benni's warm exhalations, along with his raggedly suppressed moans against his ears.

Then came a day when Mats risked his own life to retrieve the mangled corpse of Benni from battlefields strewn with decaying flesh. As he touched his lips to those blond blocks for the last time, Mats realized with a jolt that perhaps, this won't be the last time after all.

Fifteenth-century Venice: the hub of the Renaissance. Renowned painter Signor Hummels found Benni smiling shyly at him behind an eerie-looking carnival mask, in the midst of a clamouring crowd at Piazza San Marco. Century after century, that tender hazel gaze never seemed to alter, Mats mused to himself.

At dusk, they strolled languorously by the winding canals, with bands of pigeons circling above their heads. Beneath the dying rays of the sun, Benni's curly locks the hue of ripe wheat fluttered ever so slightly in the wind. During the night, they welded their bodies into one another under the flickering of candlelight, deliberately branding crimson marks of passion into each other's flesh. Night after night, until Benni, pale and emaciated, succumbed to the latest bout of plague in his sleep.

Mats decided to immortalize those familiar features as the winged Archangel Gabriel bearing lily branches in his hands. The painting, along with its subject smiling timidly from the canvas hung in the drawing rooms of wealthy merchants, above the beds of prepubescent girls, and by confessional booths in grand cathedrals - blessed by many, much like his name suggests. 

No one knew whom the golden-haired angel was modeled after, although this would be the very last painting completed by the magnificent Signor Hummels.

Henceforth, Benni seemed to have evaporated from the world. Lifetime after lifetime of fruitless searching did not bring Mats the rendezvous he desperately wished for.

Not until eighteenth-century Westphalia did the bearded, middle-aged Benni reappear before him，holding a wide-eyed boy in his arms with his plump wife by his side.

As the village pastor, Mats dutifully performed baptism on Benni's son, touching a drop of water to the squirming child's forehead. Long after the last disciple left the pews, he wandered dejectedly along the banks of the Rhine. The next morning, the body of the pastor, still in his robes was found floating along the river.

During the twentieth century, Nazi Germany under Hitler's rule became hell on earth in the literal sense. The openly gay Mats was forced to wear a pink triangle of shame at all times, and soon found himself in the death camps along with thousands of suffering Jews.

In the dying days of the Third Reich, Mats, gaunt and wasted from extreme labour, was ordered to line up for the "showers". Moments before his death, his gaze lingered on the hazel-eyed official in Nazi uniform hastily barking out orders.

_Even reduced to ashes and dust, I'll be by your side, always._

The summer of 2009, Mats woke up groggily in a hotel room in Malmö, Sweden, then flipped himself over to watch his teammate sleeping peacefully by his side.

_Even though each time I know I'll see you again, I can't help but wonder to myself: Is it really you? Will this be the last time?_

The delicate features of the boy twitched faintly, and he murmured inaudible words in his slumber, as if to say: _Yes, Mats, it's really me. It's always been me, for the past nine lives._

Mats leaned over, carefully brushing aside Benni's messy bangs, and planted a kiss on his forehead.

_No matter. It's only fair that I'm destined to chase you across ten, twenty, a hundred lifetimes, until I find the one where you'll return to me._

**Author's Note:**

> I'd do backflips for comments, I swear!
> 
> Me: _I will go down with the Hömmels ship._  
>  Friend: _...homos? What?_


End file.
